March 3, 2016

EPFL researchers have developed films with conductive tracks just several hundreds of nanometers thick that can be bent and stretched up to four times their original length. They could be used in artificial skin, connected clothing, and on-body sensors.

Instead of bring printed on a board, the tracks are almost as flexible as rubber and can be stretched up to four times their original length and in… read more

Goal is to enable severely paralyzed patients to one day become mobile

March 3, 2016

Duke Health neuroscientists have developed a brain-machine interface (BMI) that allows monkeys to steer a robotic wheelchair with their thoughts.

The BMI uses signals from hundreds of neurons recorded simultaneously in two regions of the monkeys’ brains that are involved in movement and sensation. As the animals think about moving toward their goal — in this case, a bowl containing fresh grapes — computers translate their brain… read more

March 2, 2016

Last month, Meta CEO Meron Gribetz wowed TED with a sneak peak at the company’s new Meta 2 augmented-reality product. Today, Meta announced that the Meta 2 Development Kit is now available for pre-orders.

Meta 2′s Iron-Man-like immersive functionality appears similar to Hololens and Magic Leap, but with a wider 90-degree field of view, 2560 x 1440 high-DPI display, and natural hand-controlled operation.

Subjects show blind obedience to a broken-down robot in a experiment with a mock fire

March 1, 2016

In a finding reminiscent of the bizarre Stanford prison experiment, subjects in an experiment blindly followed a robot in a mock building-fire emergency — even when it led them into a dark room full of furniture and they were told the robot had broken down.

The research was designed to determine whether or not building occupants would trust a robot designed to help them evacuate a high-rise… read more

March 1, 2016

A Google natural language understanding research group led by Ray Kurzweil is building software systems that can understand natural language at a human level. The goal is to understand and interpret meanings of spoken or written language.

One key to achieving that understanding is establishing context, suggest researchers Chris Tar; Marc Pickett, PhD.; and Brian Strope, PhD., on the Google Research Blog.

February 29, 2016

Today, March 1, five international futurist organizations will conduct a 24-hour global online conversation about the world’s potential futures, challenges, and opportunities. The objective is to support humanity in thinking about a more positive future.

Already started in New Zealand, the conversation is moving across the world with people entering and leaving the conversation whenever they want. The five organizations (The Millennium Project; the Association of Professional Futurists; “Science,… read more

Harvard scientists are now working on "mini-stomachs" with insulin-producing cells as a diabetes treatment

February 29, 2016

Harvard University scientists have made major progress in dealing with a long-standing hurdle in treating diabetic patients.

People with diabetes have high blood sugar because their pancreatic beta cells (which store and release insulin) are not producing enough insulin. In type 1 diabetes (“juvenile diabetes”), the beta cells are even destroyed. In most cases, physicians treat type 1 diabetes with insulin injections, but people with complications may… read more

February 26, 2016

USC researchers have created an automated method of manufacturing nanoparticles that may transform the process from an expensive, painstaking, batch-by-batch process by a technician in a chemistry lab, mixing up a batch of chemicals by hand in traditional lab flasks and beakers.

Consider, for example, gold nanoparticles. Their ability to slip through the cell’s membrane makes them ideal delivery devices for medications to healthy cells, or fatal… read more

February 26, 2016

Just as the single-crystal silicon wafer forever changed the nature of communication 60 years ago, Cornell researchers hope their work with quantum dot solids — crystals made out of crystals — can help usher in a new era in electronics.

The team has fashioned two-dimensional superstructures out of single-crystal building blocks. Using a pair of chemical processes, the lead-selenium nanocrystals are synthesized into larger crystals, then fused together… read more

February 26, 2016

Columbia University scientists recently tested a new optical technique to study how information is transmitted in the brains of mice and made a surprising discovery: When stimulated electrically to release dopamine (a neurotransmitter or chemical released by neurons, or nerve cells, to send signals to other nerve cells), only about 20 percent of synapses — the connections between cells that control brain activity —… read more

Could also help research in creating replacement arteries for patients

February 26, 2016

Duke University researchers have developed a rapid new technique for making small-scale artificial human arteries for use in a system for testing drugs — one that is more accurate and reliable than using animal models. That means promising drugs could be better tested before entering human trials.

The new technique produces the artificial arteries ten times faster than current methods and the arteries are functional.

February 24, 2016

Using a sophisticated, custom-designed 3D printer, regenerative medicine scientists at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center have proved that it is feasible to print living tissue structures to replace injured or diseased tissue in patients.

Reporting in Nature Biotechnology, the scientists said they printed ear, bone and muscle structures. When implanted in animals, the structures matured into functional tissue and developed a system of blood vessels. Most importantly,… read more

February 24, 2016

The traditional stethoscope has just been superseded by an electronic stethoscope and an app called Respiratory Sounds Visualizer, which can automatically classify lung sounds into five common diagnostic categories.* The system was developed by three physician researchers at Hiroshima University and Fukushima Medical University in collaboration with Pioneer Corporation.

The respiratory specialist doctors recorded and classified lung sounds of 878 patients, then turned these… read more